TERRAFORMING TERRA
We discuss and comment on the role agriculture will play in the containment of the CO2 problem and address protocols for terraforming the planet Earth.
A model farm template is imagined as the central methodology. A broad range of timely science news and other topics of interest are commented on.

Friday, May 13, 2016

The Worst Thing about a Basic Income: You'll Never Get Rid of It

This is nonsense but then economic theory has never been properly codified. First off, all social programs are patches used to avoid establishing a basic income protocol. They would not exist were they not necessary. The central purpose of a universal basic income protocol is to actually replace all those social programs including pensions and their like.

That such a protocol need to be linked at the hip with market deliverables is also obvious. That it should also naturally incentivize is also obvious. The way that i recommend is to link the payment to a daily four hour shift for six days a week in real community service that makes society more efficient and allows long term labor investment as well. That this payment be sufficient to house and feed is obvious.

Once the base is clearly established it is no trick to accommodate the sick and the elderly within this structure..

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The Worst Thing about a Basic Income: You'll Never Get Rid of It Social Security Shows What Happens to Universal Programs

Andrew Flowers at FiveThirtyEight has an interesting new column on the universal basic income (UBI), which has been gaining traction in policy circles as a potential alternative to the current welfare regime. Finland is considering a UBI experiment, as is the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Y Combinator. The results of such experiments should be illuminating, given that UBI has never been tried on a large scale.

The basic idea of UBI is that instead of a complicated system of welfare programs — TANF, EITC, Medicaid, CHIP, Food Stamps, Section 8, unemployment insurance, etc. — every citizen in the country will receive a check from the government, no questions asked. Proponents argue that this would allow people to spend their money on what they want, replacing a patchwork of programs to take care of housing, food, and every other need individually.

Such a system would lead to both an efficiency gain and a reduction in administrative costs. Moreover, it would eliminate the work disincentives built into the current system. Everyone, from Warren Buffett and Jeff Bezos to those below the poverty line, would receive the same cash transfer.

UBI detractors most often cite its cost and potential to promote non-work. Both of these are legitimate objections, to which I would like to add one more: a universal basic income would be near-impossible to reform.

Milton Friedman once observed that “nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.” The trouble with government programs is that there is usually an interest group behind them ready to fight tooth-and-nail against any reforms, lest they serve to expand the program.

When programs benefit a limited group, it is sometimes feasible to change them. The welfare reform of 1996 is a good example. But a universal program, by construction, provides visible benefits to everyone. Even when a universal program is in dire need of reform, changing it can be next to impossible.

Consider the case of Social Security. There is a reason the program is known as the “third rail” of politics. Almost everyone over the age of 65 collects it, and Social Security benefits represent 39 percent of seniors’ income. The program, which has existed since 1940, has ballooned from less than one percent of GDP in its early years to over five percent of GDP today. Moreover, the program’s expected costs are going nowhere but up.

According to the latest Trustees’ Report, Social Security will face insolvency in 2034, when those born in the late 1960s start retiring. At that point it will only have enough funds to pay three-quarters of scheduled benefits. The program needs to either increase revenues (by raising taxes) or reduce benefits (by raising the retirement age or trimming the annual inflation adjustment) in order to remain solvent.

Yet policymakers have taken very little action, with reforms such as “chained CPI” going nowhere in Congress. Sometimes, temporary changes to the program have even gone in the wrong direction. In 2009, Congress authorized supplementary “economic recovery payments” to compensate for the lack of measured inflation and corresponding cost-of-living increase that year. With similarly low inflation in 2015, some members of Congress have clamored for a similar one-time payment this year. There is simply no political will to make necessary changes to such a popular program.

Now imagine a universal basic income, which everyone would receive. Once policymakers pick a benefit level and method of calculating the cost-of-living adjustment, they will be stuck with it for a long time. Most of their constituents are going to be unhappy with any attempt to reduce benefits or trim the inflation adjustment. Like Social Security, once the program is set on autopilot, it will be very difficult to change. Design it wrong, and the federal budget could be stuck with more unsustainable costs.

Or, if UBI ends up creating a large work disincentive and reduces the employment-population ratio to untenably low levels, some sort of work requirement on the program might seem like an attractive reform. Good luck with that if beneficiaries want to keep their basic income regardless of their employment situation.

As economies change, policies must change with them. In the example of Social Security, the economy of 1960 had five workers per retiree and could easily support such a substantial public pension system. Now the economy has less than three workers per retiree and the program’s finances look much shakier. One can imagine that the economy of forty or fifty years from now will look very different from today’s. Institutions such as universal basic income must be able to adapt.

Welfare programs that target their benefits towards specific groups, such as the poor, are easier to reform than universal programs. From a political perspective, an expanded earned income tax credit or negative income tax, with their targeted benefits, would be preferable to a universal basic income. Policymakers should prove they can fix Social Security before adding another large entitlement program to the books.

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Apr 2017 - 4.1 Mil Pg Views, March 2013 - Posted my paper introducing CLOUD COSMOLOGY & NEUTRAL NEUTRINO rigorously described as the SPACE TIME PENDULUM, September 2010 I am pleased to report that my essay titled A NEW METRIC WITH APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS AND SOLVING CERTAIN HIGHER ORDERED DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS' has been published in Physics Essays(AIP) and appeared in their June 2010 quarterly. 40 years ago I took an honors degree in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. My interest was Relativity and my last year there saw me complete a 900 level course under Hanno Rund on his work in relativity,as well as differential geometry(pure math) and of course analysis. I continued researching new ideas and knowledge since that time and I have prepared a book for publication titled Paradigms Shift&. I maintain my blog as a day book and research tool to retain data and record impressions and interpretations on material read. Do join my blog and receive Four items of interest daily Monday through Saturday.